Infinite Loops

An infinite loop is a loop that executes a statement or a block of statements repeatedly, without a guarding condition to determine its end (such as the while/do and repeat/until loops or a pre-defined set of items to loop over, like the for loop).

An infinite loop will run indefinitely, until it is explicitly broken out of using either a break, exit or raise statement.

The syntax for an infinite loop is simply the loop keyword, followed by the statement to be repeated:

loop DoSomething();

Infinite Loops and begin/end blocks.

On its own, the infinite loop only takes a single statement to be executed for each iteration.

Given the need to eventually break out of the loop with a break or exit statement, the infinite loop is almost always used in combination with a begin/end block statement to allow the execution of multiple statements for each iteration:

loop begin
  DoSomething();
  DoSomethingElse();
  if DoneSomethingThird then
    break;
end;

Prematurely Exiting the Loop or a Loop Iteration

Like all loops, infinite loops can be exited prematurely using the break and exit statements, and a single loop iteration can be cut short by using the continue statement, which jumps to the next loop iteration.

See Also